Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Diablo 3: Simplified Gearing Guide for Wizards

Once players have reached Inferno difficulty on Diablo III, they’re bound to search for a guide that can help them survive the game and defeat the Lord of Terror for the fourth time. At least that’s what happened to me. Because, yes, the hardest difficulty is really hard. Anyway, this gearing guide lists which attributes/stats/properties/modifiers to emphasize for every equipment. The result? Top DPS and top survival.

Note: This guide is not intended for wizards using melee builds.

Gearing for Top DPS

These are the available attributes that contribute to DPS, listed in order of importance:

Critical Hit Chance (Crit Chance)

Critical Hit Damage (Crit Dmg)

Increased Attack Speed (IAS)

Intelligence (INT)

Equipment pieces with their highest possible Crit Chance:

Gloves (Hands): 10%

Amulet (Neck): 8.5%

Source (Off-Hand): 8.5%

Helm (Head): 6%

Bracers (Wrists): 6%

Rings (Finger): 4.5% per ring

Maxing out the Crit Chance in every piece will provide you a total of 48%, which means you’ll be landing critical hits almost every half of the time.

Equipment pieces with their highest possible added Crit Dmg:

Weapon (1-Hand): 200%

The weapon itself can only reach 100%. To double it, you must insert into its socket a Radiant Star Emerald.

Amulet (Neck): 65%

Gloves (Hands): 50%

Rings (Finger): 34% each

Equipment pieces with their highest possible IAS:

Weapon (1-Hand): 11%

Rings (Finger): 9% per ring

Amulet (Neck): 9%

Gloves (Hands): 9%

Equipment pieces which contribute the most INT:

Every piece

Summary:

Remember, Crit Chance > Crit Dmg > IAS > INT. Focus on reaching the limit of the most important attribute per equipment before proceeding to other attributes.

Given the listed maximum bonuses above, obtain equipment piece with the following modifier bonus combinations:

Weapon (1-Hand): Socketed + Crit Dmg

Amulet (Neck): Crit Chance + Crit Dmg

Gloves (Hands): Crit Chance + Crit Dmg (even better if with IAS)

Source (Off-Hand): Crit Chance + Crit Dmg

Rings (Finger): Crit Chance + IAS

Helm (Head): Crit Chance + INT

Bracers (Wrists): Crit Chance + INT

Gearing for Top Survival

You may have noticed that not all armor item types have been enumerated above such as boots and belt. These remaining equipment do not contribute a lot of damage bonuses (only the INT property is available) and are therefore better suited to increasing your defenses.

The attributes below contribute to defense. They are of equal importance because each of them strengthens your effective health.

Armor

All Resistance

Life (Vitality and Life %)

Equipment piece with the least DPS:

Chest Armor (Torso)

Pants (Legs)

Shoulders

Belt (Waist)

Boots (Feet)

How to reach max effective health without sacrificing DPS:

The ratio of Armor to All Resistance must be 10 to 1. For instance, if you have 2800 Armor, your All Resistance bonus should be 280.

As much as possible, obtain pieces that have sockets to place INT gems (topaz) into. The possible number of sockets per piece are:

Chest Armor: 3

Pants: 2

Boots must have increased movement speed of at least 10%. With it, you can outrun normal mobs and have a better fighting chance against elite monsters.